Wednesday 3/30: “Railroaded!” at the Portage Theater

Join us this Wednesday 3/30 for Anthony Mann’s pulpy of film noir.
Obscenely rare print from private collections! You won’t see this film on celluloid anywhere else!
The Portage Theater – 4050 N. Milwaukee Ave – 7:30 – $5.00 per ticket

March 30th, 2011 RAILROADED!
Anthony Mann • 1947
Even the most dedicated among us sometimes confuses Anthony Mann’s forties output—so many films, so many generic characters and set-ups, so many double-crosses elaborate and elaborately similar. But each is also imbued with a real pugilist desire to bust out of the Poverty Row rat trap (or hornet’s nest?). Whether it’s Eagle-Lion or RKO or Republic (really, it doesn’t matter), a cry rises up from the sawmill floor—“Notice me! Acknowledge my efficiency and reward my small achievements!” And always from this whiny din, a moment of advanced sadism, an innovation to make the foreman howl with tentative, but mostly jealous, disapproval. Though Railroaded! doesn’t have a man carved up by tractor blades (vide Border Incident), it does feature John Ireland as Duke, the misogynistic thug who indiscriminately fires perfumed bullets. He and Jane Randolph frame pretty boy laundry truck driver Ed Kelly in the murder of a cop. But when the innocent man’s plucky sister gets involved—watch out! (KW)Print from Private Collections.
72 min • PRC • 16mm
Short: Philo Vance, Detective (Screen Gems, 1947) 16mm